ACLU Wants Gideons Out Of Elementary School

Posted on August 22, 2006

The ACLU is trying to restrict the Gideons from handing out Bibles to fifth-graders at an elementary school in Missouri.

For years the superintendent of the South Iron R-1 School District in Annapolis, Missouri, has permitted various groups to present information to students at district schools. The open access policy in the district has allowed such groups as Red Cross, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Union Pacific Railroad to have access to the students during classroom time. The Gideons International, which annually places and distributes more than 63 million Scriptures worldwide, has had access to schools during a study period.

Now, however, The Gideons has been singled out in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri, which claims that last fall two Gideons representatives were permitted to address fifth-graders during class time and then distribute New Testaments to them — an action the ACLU says is unconstitutional. The lawsuit seeks an injunction prohibiting the South Iron Schools from continuing to allow outside visitors into their classrooms for religious purposes.

If the school decides to remove a communist propaganda book from the library shelves you can count on the ACLU to fight it crying “book ban”. If students are being required to take Muslim names, play jihad games, and bow down in the direction of Mecca you can count on the ACLU to be silent. But when it comes to a tiny New Testament being distributed to students the ACLU think it is unconsititutional.

Thankfully there are other legal groups out there fighting the ACLU. Liberty Counsel and David Limbaugh are helping this school to fight the lawsuit. Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, says the attacks against the school district are unfounded.

“An open access policy under the First Amendment requires that you treat religious speech equally,” Staver explains. “The ACLU may not like the idea that they have to treat religious speech equally, but the fact of the matter is the Constitution demands it. So we’re now defending this ACLU lawsuit which we believe, frankly, is frivolous.”

Beyond that consideration, Liberty Counsel has added motivation to be involved in the case, says the attorney. “I think it’s important to stand up in this particular case because if the ACLU had its way, it would literally shut down religious speech; it would be discriminating intentionally against religious speech, whereas all the other forms of secular expression have their way in the marketplace,” says Staver.

Religious viewpoints are protected under the First Amendment, adds the Liberty Counsel founder, but “the ACLU wants to silence [religious] expression. They want all this [other] information to come as a free flow to the students, but not religious information — in this case, specifically, no Bibles,” he comments. “I think it’s very important for our religious freedom and certainly for our constitutional liberties to stand up against the bullies of the ACLU.”

» Filed Under 1st Amendment, ACLU, Church And State, News

Trackback URL

Comments

One Response to “ACLU Wants Gideons Out Of Elementary School”

kerwin_brown on August 24th, 2006 5:29 pm

The ACLU is for Cuban Communist propaganda in school and against bibles. Communist countries are atheist countries. Does anyone see the link here?